Thursday, August 21, 2008

For We Are Girt by Fail

I received an ominous email late Monday night from one Busby Esq. with the simple subject heading ”Ready to pay up?”. The email consisted of a single screen capture of the Olympic Medal Count, of most note was Great Britain’s new position above Australia – their 12 Gold Medals outnumbering our 11.

That was two entire days ago and, well, it’s looking even bleaker now.

In hindsight, I probably should have done a bit of research. I don’t know why I was so confident Australia would beat the UK by 20 medals, I had no idea what our Olympic line up was like.

Why didn’t somebody tell me Ian Thorpe had retired? I thought he was a young punter? WTF is that all about?

Is the Awesome Foursome still around? What about Robert De Castella? Dean Lukin? What about that Wombat from A Country Practice? Let’s put that fucking thing in an event. Launch the fucker off the 10 metre diving board, if we don’t get a medal at least it will put a smile on the kids’ faces.

In all honesty, Australia had a new Prime Minister for about three months before I knew about it. I’m unsurprised I know so little about our Olympic hopes.

Oh well, there are still four days of competition left. As long as Britain gets no medals, and Australia gets 21 – I’m still in the clear. That should be fine if there are some Aussie-favourable events coming up such as the lawn bowls, the Triple Bean Flick, and the 200 metre Half Mongrel.

In other news, I’m off to Serbia for the Belgrade Beer Fest tomorrow morning.

Chuck sent us this email regarding the trip:

“Remember to organise travel insurance, as we are heading to a Beer Festival in a potentially volatile section of the world”.

Friday, August 15, 2008

Its on like Donkey Kong

Well I caught up with Buzz on Saturday, and he has agreed to the bet. Although we've upped it to £20, which is a nice even number, and also the exact amount in my savings account (give or take 30p).

I got off lightly with Buzz as far as bets go, usually if you make a wager with the guy the loser has to eat an entire Cactus, or do the London Marathon in a suit of armour full of maggots.

Actually, I'll be surprised if Buzz even remembers us making this Olympic bet at all, we shook on it Saturday night - and it was also his birthday, so the wager was made in a Tsunami of Vodka.

Last I saw Buzz, he wandered onto the dance floor at Infernos - and promptly disappeared. It was a bit disconcerting, as we had only been in the club for about ten minutes.

Buzz didn't remember Infernos at all, but told me he woke up Sunday morning in his house completely naked, with the door open and all the lights on. This is quite unerring, unless you've been to Infernos, then you will know that this if par for the course (places I've woken up after a night at Infernos include a stair case, a suit case, and a shower - with the water running).

The current medal counts are:

AUSTRALIA: 5 GOLD, 4 SILVER, 7 BRONZE. TOTAL: 16

GREAT BRITAIN: 2 GOLD, 2 SILVER, 3 BRONZE. TOTAL: 7

Australia needs to be in the clear by 20 medals for me to win this bet, so we are currently lagging by 11. I've got no idea how strong our Olympic team is this year, not even sure why I made this bet - something to do I guess. What the fuck is going on with the Men's swimming? I thought we were good at that?

Nobody seems to give a fuck about the Olympics in London at the moment, maybe due to the time difference we are just getting sporadic highlights footage - but probably because the almighty Football Premiership kick off in a few days. If I wanted to, I could probably go to a nearby Walkabout pub early in the morning and watch a rowing race, surrounded by over-zealous fuckers in Aussie flag face paint singing Waltzing Matilda every ten minutes. That's if I wanted to of course, and I truly, truly don't want to.

Although not everybody is treating this Olympics meet with sleepy disinterest - one British guy climbed up a 120 foot pole the other day and hung a huge "FREE TIBET" banner from the top. The Chinese President was so impressed by this, that he immediately granted Tibet total political and religious autonomy.

Friday, August 08, 2008

God Bless Luke Perry

The Olympic Ceremony is going to kick off soon. I can hardly believe it's been four years since the last one.

It feels like only yesterday I was lying on the couch in my Battersea flat in a despondent daze watching a race of some sort. I remember this, because a local drug dealer tried to hide in the phone box outside my flat (note: not the best hiding place) and it took four police men to remove him from it. I watched all of this unfold instead of the race, which was the 200m (or some shit) so I don't know who won it.

The opening Ceremony will kick off at 8:08pm China time, and as 8 is a lucky number in those parts, I think it is actually starting at 8:08:08 (down to the second). The ceremony will run for 88 minutes, and then an 88 year old man will unveil a screen, and everybody will be forced at gunpoint to watch the movie 8 seconds in it's entirety, 8 times.

I heard there's going to be a shitload of fireworks and dragons in the ceremony, and at one point Jet Li is going to burst out of a giant pork bun and cause an entire family of Pandas to explode just by glaring at them.

It's going to be an all singing all dancing affair, but because of the time difference the ceremony will be starting at 1:08pm here - so there's a good chance I will miss it, and be embroiled in a slog of deleting emails and watching Hentai porn (it being a word day and all).

I wonder what the Australian uniform will look like this year? Will they go for the deranged Park Ranger look, or the formal woollen attire that makes them look like they should be handing out tea and biscuits on the Qantas Friday afternoon flight to Bali. Fuck it, let's Google it:

Looks like they went for the latter option. Australia usually does quite well in the Olympics, taking into account our quite small population (finished in the top four last two meets, mofos), and I reckon we should enter the ceremony like this:

That would be awesome.

Australia has always been such a juggernaut on the sporting scene, which makes me wonder why I, personally, have always been so shit. I kicked three goals in a game for the Moonta mini league about two decades ago, and I think I came third in the long jump at a school Sports day around about the same time - But I've done absolutely nothing of any value since. I'm pretty good at Guitar Hero though, so it evens out in the end.

I can't believe this is my second Olympics in London, have I really been living here more than four years? How am I still alive?

One thing I like about watching it here, is that a different set of events take centre stage to back home. A country's televised coverage will of course concentrate on the sports that their team excels at - and the limeys prefer a different set of events to us Aussies (if I was back home, I could expect a day's viewing to consist of six hours of equestrian events, followed by ten hours of long distance swimming. Yeah, rock on). Though I have to admit that like any sporting event, it feels a little empty without Roy and HG's input.

And no sporting event is complete without a little gambling, so I've texted my limey mate Buzz to see if he wanted to take a 10 quid wager - Australia to beat the UK's medal count by 20 (or more).